Friday, December 09, 2005

National Grassroots Campaign to Spread Awareness of Peak Oil to Syriana Audiences

To further raise the awareness among Syriana audiences that oil supply disruptions are coming and that preparations urgently need to begin locally, Post Carbon Institute (postcarbon.org) is mobilizing volunteers around the country to distribute catchy flyers to moviegoers before and after the film.

Our tragic reliance on oil is grimly portrayed in the new film Syriana, which depicts $20 per gallon gas, skyrocketing food costs, and escalating global terrorism in the face of declining fossil fuel reserves. With respect to energy scarcity, the plot of the movie is much more realistic than most people realize. Ever-higher oil costs will become the norm for Americans as world production passes its inevitable peak, which many analysts think will occur within two to five years.

Syriana couldn’t hit theaters at a more appropriate time with Americans now enduring painful gas prices at the pump and growing anxiety over terrorism and the war in Iraq. "Syriana is a portal into our future. The film will soften up the American public for the coming oil price shocks and the early ramifications of the end of cheap oil," said David Room, Director of Policy and Mobilization for Post Carbon Institute (www.postcarbon.org), a nonprofit organization that works for the transition to the post-petroleum future. “Post Carbon Institute applauds Participant Productions for making such a timely film on the geopolitics of energy scarcity and initiating their Oil Change campaign.”

After “peak oil” – the point at which the rate of global oil extraction reaches its highest level and then goes into inexorable decline – some of the growing demand for petroleum and the multitude of products for which it is used will necessarily go unsatisfied. Oil scarcity will also increase pressure on supplies and raise the price of America’s second most important energy source, North American natural gas, which is already strained to its limits despite recent mild winters.

Federal policymakers are beginning to acknowledge the serious need to shift from our dangerous dependence on oil and natural gas. Former State Dept. Chief of Staff Lawrence Wilkerson recently said: "We have an economy and a society that is built on the consumption of [oil and natural gas ]. We better get fast at work changing the foundation." A new bipartisan Peak Oil Caucus has just formed in the U.S. House of Representatives, calling for the establishment of an energy project with the magnitude, creativity, and sense of urgency that was incorporated in the ‘Man on the Moon’ project to address the inevitable challenges of peak oil.

To further raise the awareness among Syriana audiences that oil supply disruptions are coming and that preparations urgently need to begin locally, Post Carbon Institute (www.postcarbon.org) is mobilizing volunteers around the country to distribute catchy flyers to moviegoers before and after the film. The flyers link back to a website (http://www.postcarbon.org/syriana) that provides more information and downloadable flyers. Syriana, which The New York Times calls "one of the best geopolitical thrillers in a very long time,” debuts today in theaters.

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